Nightmare Circus

From Sega Retro

To do

  • "If I remember correctly, I believe one of the devs said that the game was unfinished (on the nightmare circus message boards)."
  • "I just checked the beta version, and the area that's blanked out, in the beta, it puts you on the bottom of the bridge area."
  • It's probably lost to time, but there should have been a "game guide" to go along with the US Sega Channel release. I'd be really interested to see how certain names were localized.
  • Create a section on the cancelled US release in History, and include a picture of it appearing in This Is Sega Test.
  • There's a prototype dumped by Hidden Palace that hasn't been covered whatsoever.
  • Is the game's soundtrack unfinished too? It's very well-done for a GEMS game, but a few tracks have seriously misaligned instruments. I originally chocked this up to purposeful design (its an eerie, surreal setting, so making the music sound a little "off" would make sense), but the more I've been listening to it, I'm not so sure. Give the track commonly-titled "Chainsaw" a listen. That sounds less purposeful and more misaligned. And there are some other tracks which play suspiciously short and underwhemling samples (or the very beginning of them.) TBH the soundtrack was probably designed that way, but maybe email the composer/s and see if there's anything to this.
  • Ricardo Pinto was the designer (creator) of Nightmare Circus.
  • It seems you need to wait about 8 seconds or so after defeating every boss for the level to end. (Was this at all intentional, perhaps for music timing? probably not, but a thought) Speaking of, the Tweaker lets you change the spawn/despawn times of enemies. This has to be related to the above timing "issues" somehow...
  • The Tweaker is only usable with a 6-button controller for some reason, per the manual.
  • The 1v1 stage select screen has a voided-out entry you can't select, with speculation that's the "Indian Swamp". I don't know, none of the other codes warp you to/or refer to specific stages, and there's already a stage select...
  • So the Tweaker and settings info from the Hidden content subpage can probably stay there, but maybe with a dedicated section on the main page with an MainArticle to it. The reason I bring this up is because it's not... technically hidden. As in its advertised a lot, and specifically detailed in the manual. If anything, the subpage needs to be reformatted to cover all the Tweaker settings, by option.
  • We have three roms listed. The first appears to be the Brazilian cartridge release, and the second is the prototype. The third one... is marked as a prototype, but could that just be the Sega Channel rom? It's 2MB tho... is this a second prototype? Or is this just the Sega Channel rom somehow? And if it IS a second prototype, we need to investigate it AND create a fourth rom listing for the Sega Channel ROM. We do that, right? I'll have to look into this.

CartridgeCulture (talk) 09:33, 21 December 2021 (EST)

Codes to add

  • LITTLEPUPPET - Unknown
  • SPIRITSHADOW - Unknown
  • INDIAN SWAMP - Unknown

Enemies

These names are obviously tentative.

  • Mechanics (lots of levels)
  • Little flying tribal guy (wooden billboard only?)
  • Clay trapeze guys (trapeze level only)
  • Dark Ravens (The Ticket Booth only, and possibly spawned by Diablo's Super Dark Raven form in final fight?)
  • Skinless dogs (spinning chainlink fence only)
  • Vial maze grubs (vial maze only)
  • Clown faces on worm-like balls that spit projectiles (The Ticket Booth only?)
  • Miniature circus cannons that roll up to Raven and shoot projectiles (The Ticket Booth only?)

Bosses

These names are obviously tentative.

  • Super Dark Raven
  • Leatherface (+Wooden saw robot)
  • Purple wizard
  • Fan guy
  • Grub lady
  • "The Jester" (official name)

Stages

The Carnival

  • The one with the rollercoaster on the very left.
  • Level 1 is what you'd imagine a platforming rollercoaster level would look like. And with how close the camera keeps to Raven, its hard to get a good idea of this level's size at the moment. It looks like you could run around on foot, but I think the whole purpose is to wait like 8 seconds at the start of the level for the rollercoaster train to spawn, hop in that, and then after a few more screens of rolling around it drops you off at Level 2.
  • Level 2 is the "workyard", the maintenance area for the rollercoaster trains. There's one of those railroad stopper things directly in front of Raven when he spawns, and directly past that is a long walk to the boss, where there's a pretty heavy stream of sawblade projectiles being hurled at you. I'm assuming this eats through health pretty fast (or is a one-hit kill?) and the intention is to push the block along as far as possible, but you also have to time how you push it a little, AND it can only take so many hits before breaking. And you're still a couple screen lengths away from the source of these projectiles, some skinny wooden "robot" thats standing right in front of the boss, so unless you kill the robot in about four seconds you'll be fighting both at once. The "proper" boss is uh... I'm assuming they were going for Leatherface, its a big ugly dude with a chainsaw. But the art is pretty bad on this guy, its kinda hard to tell. I thought it was the Predator at first. Defeat the boss, wait 8-10 seconds, and the level ends.
  • There's no level 3. Why not? This level gets run through really fast, and probably needs more investigation, but its the only stage with 2 levels as opposed to 3.

The Ticket Office

  • The building with the AMUSEMENTS sign.
  • Level 1 is a maze stage with a three-dimension design (not visuals). Think Phantasy Star 1 dungeons but cruder and more confusing. And you can go up and down with ladders, and attack parts of the wall to open new areas I think. A lot of the backgrounds for different sections and floors are just palette swaps so it gets more disorienting. And "turning in place" while inside a room involves running to the edge of the screen, upon which the screen blacks out for a bit as it "turns" the room. And there are enemies too. Also you can apparently press Up while in a room to also turn it? This needs investigation. Also the TAS blows through this so fast it doesn't encounter any enemies. I'm fairly sure I've seen enemies here, but look into this too.
  • Level 2 is a long hallway lined with mirrors, where you fight- a bunch of mirror images of yourself, basically. Shadow Ravens? Dark Ravens? Maybe the name's in the manual, but its basically a bunch of Dark Links who die easily but constantly come out of the mirrors. The AI looks pretty involved.
  • Leve 3 is uhm. A... psychedelic rotating cylinder? Its got some really crazy background art that palette cycles or w/e the term is, really does give off a neon vibe. Also kinda makes me nauseous. This room holds a bunch of rotating cylinders (rollers?) that seem to be pushing the background along. Smacking one of these a bit will destroy it, and you have to destroy all of them. But There's another Dark Raven that seems to be more aggressive and singular: he spawns the easily-defeatable Dark Ravens but himself is treated like a proper boss. (is this how it was in Level 2 as well? its hard to tell.) Destroy all the cylinders, defeat Super Dark Raven, wait 8-10 seconds and the level ends.

The Circus

  • The one with the ferris wheel.
  • Level 1 is a pair of ferris wheels next to each other, turning in opposite directions. The background is an animation of the opposite side of wheels. The gondolas can be jumped on, and taking the upward-turning wheel will take Raven to the "top" of the wheel, where the game loads a new screen of him on the opposite side of the wheel. So you can keep hopping between different wheels to switch to different sides. And while you can go over the top safely, there's fire on the bottom of both sides of the wheels (which I'm assuming is instant death.) This is a great bit of design too, and really works with the uneasiness of the game's mood: you're not safe standing still for too long. It's essentially a pair of conveyor belts leading to spikes, right next to each other and going in opposite directions. As long as you pay attention and switch sides every so often you'll be fine, but that slight tension will always be there. It's also pretty easy to fall off the gondolas too, and there's just enough black emptiness on either side of the wheels to make it a legitimate gameplay hazard and give the wheels a real feeling of height. While keeping Raven from getting too close to the bottom of the wheels, there are also ghostly/zombie/demon mechanic enemies that spawn pretty much right on top of him (a theme in this game.) They're easy to kill but I'm assuming they might be able to knock Raven off the wheels, and they can easily overwhelm players, which I'd imagine was part of the challenge. After a certain amount of time, the fire at the bottom of the wheels goes out, and Raven can fall to the bottom. And then unceremoniously walk offscreen to end the stage.
  • Level 2 is a spinning carnival ride-type thing, but very minimal and worn down. The background is a chainlink fence with skinless dogs crawling over it (who I believe can shoot projectiles), and there's wood on the floor. The very far background layer is a dark shot of the actual circus, and this scrolls to simulate the movement of the "ride" rotating. But it's less like a spinning carnival ride and more a railway turntable. It's got these big metal-industrial looking clown-like faces for doors: Raven enters through one, and there's another at the end of the stage. The stage also stars rotating when you enter it. You stand in front of (one of?) the door(s), hit the lever on it, and the rotating stops. I'm assuming this is some alignment puzzle that needs to be figured out, but the TAS jumps past a lot of this, so this level needs more research.
  • Level 3 is a straightforward open area set in a bumper car rink. The art here is pretty nice, very sickly but pretty green colors and nice use of dithering (this game has lots of nice dithering in places), well-chosen colors. Also gives the scene an awesome mood, with many different shades of darker colors used to make nice shadows etc. You fight a bunch of demon mechanics for a while and eventually the boss shows up. He's a magician wearing a purple suit and a candy-cane striped top-hat, with matching pants and a white cane. Note for later, all the enemies and bosses do kung-fu, and are kinda-poorly drawn and animated. I think this might be a result of the U PROGRAM system... if they spent all that time separating so many variables like that, they probably built the game's actual "physics" system around it too (or it was the other way around), and that's why so much of this game's animated looks kinda stilted and poorly-timed. ALSO, the TAS doesn't give any of these bosses time to show off attacks or strategy, another thing that needs more research. Kill the top-hat magician, wait 8 seconds, the level ends.

The Completion

  • The big top at the very back. I don't know if you can enter it at any time, or if you need to beat the other three stages first, but probably the former.
  • Level 1 starts you off on the ground in front of a long ladder. Climbing it reveals the stage to be an absolutely massive wooden "billboard" featuring some old decrepit creepy clown artwork, with multiple walkways across it. Honestly looks really cool. The billboard is made of numerous door-sized wooden panels, and attacking (spin attacking?) in front of one will destroy it. The objective is to destroy every wood panel on the billboard (or find the boss?) There's a bunch of panels that you'd imagine you'd be able to destroy, but you cant (specifically the panels directly behind the background pillars, likely because they didn't have the artwork of a pillar in front of a destroyed panel. So you just ignore those), and there are also panels that you can't reach which you can ignore as well. Basically, if there's a panel in front of a open walkway, you have to destroy it. There are also little floating guys with spiky hair and swords, kinda Castlevania Fleaman-esque but with projectiles. They also fly around seated with their legs folded most of the time, its really strange. Also a lot of their animation seems drawn for the enemy standing on the ground, but they'll still be floating around. Once you either destroy enough panels, the boss spawns (ORRR the boss is hiding behind a random panel and you have to destroy a bunch while looking for it, it's not clear.) The boss is... uhm. A? in black spandex, a skull mask, and white boots, wielding a pair of spiked green fans. He/She/it moves pretty fast too, flipping and sliding all over. Once the boss is defeated, you wait another 8 seconds in silence, then it loads Level 2.
  • Level 2 starts you off in some wooden laboratory, with Raven strapped to a circular wooden wheel for a knife-tossing minigame. Well you're not tossing the knifes, they're being tossed at Raven from the center of the screen. There's no scaling/rotation on either the knives or the wooden wheel but the art does an ok job at making it look convincing. The objective is to spin Raven's wheel around so that any knives that are tossed toward him hit the wheel and not him, like landing between his legs or the side of his body. There's a second wheel for the second player as well, but both wheels are offset from the center of the screen and it looks very odd. Also, this is really the one section of the game that takes control away from the player and doesn't feature platform beat-'em-up gameplay, so it feels very out of place and sudden. Like the rest of the game, there's no warning or preparation or anything. After avoiding enough knives, Raven falls off the wheel and begins the stage proper, like right there, no loading or anything, now you're actually in the stage. Which is honestly one of the coolest and most memorable: its a wooden laboratory, where the level's platforms, walls, and ceilings are constructed entirely out of wooden blocks housing a maze of interconnected glass vials. In this maze are a bunch of wriggling worms crawling through the maze. And much of the platforms/walls have openings to the vial maze where these things can pop out for a second and bite you. They don't ever leave the maze, and the maze isn't always connected in the most consistent of ways, so its not always the easiest to track where they're wriggling and where they'll appear. And its all dynamic too, this game's got pretty good AI in a lot of spots. The background features the same art and animation of the grubs wriggling around, crawling around in a second background maze that's attached to the first, and meaning you have to keep track of the faint grubs in the background too. There isn't any safe place to stand still, as you're pretty much always standing on a vial opening. Raven has a cool animation here of his "sidling"? his way up between platforms... it's really hard to describe this stage so just look at a video, but he flattens himself and holds his body up with his arms and legs on either side of the shaft he's climbing. And you have to time your climbing in accordance with the worms, and keep track of where they are. And the grub animations are really gross, this stage will def make someone squeamish. Also its super tense. Once you climb to the top of the stage, there's nothing there, just the top of this huge wooden block stretching on for some time. Running down this block to the right will eventually spawn the boss, some contortionist/grub-lady wearing green spandex with yellow highlights, kinda looks like she belongs more in a superhero game. Her gimmick is that she can contort herself like the grubs you've been fighting, and at any time hop into the vial maze, where she looks no different than the other grubs. She'll crawl off and appear somewhere else (I suspect the game despawns her actor once she enters the maze and respawns her somewhere else, because sometimes the grub she turns into doesn't correspond with the one she pops up from, but it gets the intended effect across), and once she's defeated, wait another 8 seconds of silence and the level just ends.
  • Level 3 is a trapeze, and is set in front of an actual audience (which appears in the previous level but only at the end, this is more-hey there's an audience watching you, and you're on the floor of the big top.) There are uh- clay people? that you have to fight. They almost look like the base art you might drawn enemy artwork over, maybe more U PROGRAM shenanigans. These clay guys flip around doing trapeze stuff and attacking you, and if they're met on the ground, they'll start juggling with their "clay" and throw the balls at Raven like projectiles. They can also slide up and down the trapeze supports. And there are seesaws that bounce Raven/enemies upward too, and little floating "trapeze points" on which Raven can swing, alongside the standard trapeze swing and trampolines/tightrope wires. Attacking one of the clay people for a while causes it to curl up into a small ball, drop to the floor, and die. Except it doesn't, it takes another 8 seconds or so. Seriously whats with the timing issues in this game, is this intentional? So you hop around the abnormally-large level (another theme with this game) looking for guys to smack. Once they're all despawned, another enemy begins to spawn in the center of the level. But it doesn't spawn right away, it just displays its "about to spawn" smoke cloud for again about 8 seconds, and then the game cuts to black for another second while it actually loads the boss level and takes you to an entirely new screen. ALSO, either one of these trapeze guys is a "super" trapeze guy that can take more damage and has a different appearance (he vaguely looks chicken/bird-like, with a bird skull and bird-feet), or they all turn into bird-things after a while? I think its the former.
  • Level 4/the final boss takes place in a red-tinted version of Level 3 (the big top floor with the audience, although it appears there's no trapeze gimmicks here, just fighting the boss on the floor.) The final boss is a red devil-like thing with like... its the guy on the box art with the three red horns. His gimmick is the ability to morph into the previous bosses while you fight him. Also these bosses have different color variations too. He starts in his devil form, then becomes Dark Raven, followed by green fan guy (now red fan guy), and then... the TAS beats him. I'm assuming, given enough time, he probably transforms into all the bosses, but I'm just more surprised they let you end the fight before he even gets through all his forms. Smack him enough and he spazzes for a bit (seriously the art/animation in this game is really rough) as fire rises from the floor, as if hell is opening up to pull him back in. He gets pulled into the fire, it turns off, and that's the game. Oh but not before waiting another 8 seconds. And then immediate credits.

Images to incorporate

  • 1v1 stage select screen

User:CartridgeCulture learns basic formatting

Nightmare Circus dismystified - Part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHTfV6e_hXE

Having a lot of trouble with both the proper text link, and the reference for this YouTube video. EDIT: Thank you for this and for fixing that youtube link! CartridgeCulture (talk) 02:01, 20 March 2021 (EDT)

Template:Ref ... to add your signature (with date and time) to a conversation, add four tildes (~) at the end of each of your replies (in the not too distant past, you just needed to click on an icon at the top of the page to add your signature , but this feature is "broken" and still needs to be fixed) --Asagoth (talk) 00:03, 20 March 2021 (EDT)

Is there a style guide for this wiki? Also is there a list of these special codes that we use for replacing words with other things? ALSO could you assist me in adding an Interviews section to this page, and then adding this into it?: https://segaretro.org/Interview:_Stefano_Arnhold_(2015-11-16)_by_Sega-16 I know there’s a wway to do it all properly and cleanly but I have no idea how to do it. Thanks if you can, appreciate all the help too c;

Image tagging, Sega Retro templates, Help page... another good way to learn is to see how others do it (just look for a similar page to see how it was edited) ... if you have any more doubts about something just ask our Experts Black Squirrel and SorachiJirachi‎ a.k.a. BSonirachi on Sonic Retro (Wiki Sysops) and Hivebrain (Administrator)... I'll add an interview section to Stefano Arnhold's page for you... and again... don't forget to add your signature at the end of each of your replies...Asagoth (talk) 07:11, 20 March 2021 (EDT)

Some observations...

In the back cover the story is told this way... :

  • "The maniac Jester resurrected the El Diablo traveling carnival (it says "parque de diversões" which in Portuguese means "theme park"... a "traveling carnival" would be a "parque de diversões itinerante"... but that's exactly what we have in Nightmare Circus... a traveling carnival) from the flames of hell. Now, terrifying demons roam the carnival, spreading fear and destruction where once there were children and lots of fun.
  • Only, Raven a native (American) with mystic and telepathic powers can defeat Jester and his followers in this carnival. Well, "fun" is not the most appropriate word to define this place..."--Asagoth (talk) 22:48, 22 December 2021 (EST)
Thank you, this is awesome. I wanted text confirmation that Raven was Native American. Also those refs are so cool. I saw the missing photo of the dev team too, so sad :( Maybe if I send enough emails I can find whoever has the original :p 20:51, 23 December 2021 (EST)
His brother is called White Eagle (player 2 on 2 player mode)... yep... it hurts when cool stuff gets lost... so sad... by the way... Leto Diablo is in fact Jester... I just don't know why TecToy made such a mess with the villain's name...--Asagoth (talk) 21:06, 23 December 2021 (EST)
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